Posted
by
timothyon Thursday April 02, 2009 @03:50PM
from the it-wasn't-just-the-office-doors dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Dr Brent Coker, professor of Department of Management and Marketing at Melbourne University, says employees who surf the internet for leisure during working hours are more productive than those who don't. A study of 300 office workers found 70 percent of people who use the internet at work engage in Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB). 'People who do surf the internet for fun at work — within a reasonable limit of less than 20 per cent of their total time in the office — are more productive by about nine per cent than those who don't,' said Coker. 'People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration. Think back to when you were in class listening to a lecture — after about 20 minutes your concentration probably went right down, yet after a break your concentration was restored. It's the same in the workplace.' However, Coker warns that excessive time spent surfing the internet could have the reverse effect."

Sheer luxury mate. I work in a hole in the road, it's a twenty mile commute on foot in the dark and thirty back. My father fed me stone cold poison and killed me every morning before work.
But can ye get the lads to believe you these days? Noooooo.....

We were evicted from our hole. We had to live in a shoebox in the middle of the road. Every morning we'd lick the road clean with our tongues, drink a half cup of hydrochloric acid, and our father would slice us in two with a bread knife and sing glory hallelujah.

It is, it's terrible. It's also pretty dang good for communication, I've worked in an office before and I hated it. What, you prefer to rely on email or IM (or intercom, yuck) for *all* the times you need to say "hey bob, could you check in foozballwidget.dll please?" Unless you have the luxury of being the sole maintainer of a system, your job probably requires you to frequently talk to people, which is easier of you have LoS on most of the office.

...and there are studies that say a short nap during the workday make people more productive.

My wife and I work in the same department, and occasionally take a "nap" together in a spare office. Curiously, this seems to reduce the productivity of our colleagues, who often look annoyed after our "nap".

...and there are studies that say a short nap during the workday make people more productive.

My wife and I work in the same department, and occasionally take a "nap" together in a spare office. Curiously, this seems to reduce the productivity of our colleagues, who often look annoyed after our "nap".

Damn right, we're annoyed. Those "offices" may have real doors, but they only have fabric walls...

I also promote in-office online banking and other personal business but the company balked when I suggested catered meals would also boost productivity by lowering stress levels caused by having to go out and forage, and the health benefits of not wolfing down food. Another company agreed with me and even hired a masage therapist because they found lowering stress levels among employees caused the biggest spike in productivity.

They did the same thing where I work but went further by adding a free "Happy Ending." The plan backfired as productivity decreased and sleepiness increased. However, absolutely no was was stressed out.

You do know people can bring their own lunch to work and not have to forage? It saves bundles of money for the person and they know exactly what they're having. This also allows them more time to surf the web at lunch or maybe go out and have a walk around the building or get a quickie around the corner.

I realize this is a simple solution so obviously you're a programmer! (j/k)

I've done both. Believe me, the people who get stressed out by "foraging" will get at least twice as stressed out trying to find time to throw together lunch to take along. Sure it's no big deal for the morning people who get up an hour before they need to, but for the night-owl types, there is never a good time to pack a lunch.

The only time I pack a lunch is when I'm *really* short on funds. Most of the time I'd rather pay 4x as much and eat unhealthy food that I can pick up over lunch.

I hear sandwiches are pretty easy to make;-) Seriously though, if you do some research on cooking, you will find 15-20 minute recipes for lunchtime. Of course, if you don't know how to cook, it might take you a while to get up to speed. Some of my recomendations though are: energy bars, left over spaghetti w/ sauce, imported ramen (actually has some nutritional value sometimes), hard boiled eggs, veges w/ dip, chips, juice boxes/soda cans, hummus, leftover meat left in a marinade overnight. You can get a slow cooker and have rice/beans ready for you in the morning to take to work. If you want to be a little more creative you could take a look over at Just Bento [justbento.com] for recipes. If you enjoy food, investing time in learning to prepare what you like can be massively rewarding!

I wonder how much the 'browsing the Internet' bit really matters. As others have pointed out, there have been other studies that promote the benefits of massages, naps, etc. Seems to me the common denominator is taking a break at natural intervals. I spend enough time at the keyboard during the day that my Internet usage is really minimal (no, seriously!). On the other hand, if you walk in my office you're always going to find the Wall Street Journal opened up to some article on the side of my desk. I will periodically peek over and read for a few minutes after finishing a task while waiting to start the next one, such as the five minute lull at the start of conference calls where the host keeps saying "Let's give the others a few more minutes to join..." An aside - I start my conference calls on time. After a year, even my boss was trained to be no more than 30 seconds late.

In terms of workload, I consistently fall into the 'exceeds expectations' category when it comes time to figure out year-end ratings. Yet I also keep a fairly regular schedule. I'm not in the office 12 hours a day like the guys across the hall who consider it a badge of honor to eat lunch AND dinner at work yet bitch when their reviews keep coming back as 'meets expectations.' And yes, we more or less have the same job duties.

Depending on what the employee is viewing, it is also an opportunity to LEARN something.

My wife regularly surfs the web at work, often news, and consistently finds stories that directly effect the industry she works in, sometimes her actual place of employment. She then brings this information to the people she works for, the people that need to know about it.

When I first graduated and got my first job, during down times I would read up on multi-threading and database optimizations because it was interesting. As new projects have come up, I have applied what I learned to make some code go from minutes to seconds with correct results.

Many times I get stuck on something and I just open up my favorite game forum and veg for 2-3 minutes. It's enough time to usually come back and view my problem a-new and figure it out.

My wife regularly surfs the web at work, often news, and consistently finds stories that directly effect the industry she works in, sometimes her actual place of employment. She then brings this information to the people she works for, the people that need to know about it.

All joking aside, I've gotten a lot of that out of Slashdot. I've rolled out quite a few technologies at work that I might not have heard of were it not for people here arguing about which implementation was best.

On the intangible side, there's much to be said for practicing making your points clearly and succinctly, and for learning to anticipate counter-arguments and answer them before anyone else brings them up. Debate team has nothing on a good language war.

I like the idea of a cigarette break, even though I don't smoke. It's pretty social. Parents tell you when you go to school not to give in to peer pressure and hang out with the cool smoking kids during break, but the older I get, the less I think that that kind of advice makes sense. Only by the time I was halfway university, I started figuring out how to enjoy life a bit, instead of just studying. Missed a part there! Hang around with the cool smoking kids! Drink beer! Try weed! Have sex before marriage!

When you bludge, you are not necessarily putting anything off. You could just be relying on others to do the work for you. That's not exactly procrastination.

Bludging is an activity (or lack thereof) one could undertake while procrastinating, but so is running round like a headless chook. Bludging is more about piss-farting around on someone else's time or resources. For example, dole bludgers don't procastinate. Clear?

Seems that when a study slashdotters don't agree with (video games "boost" teen violence), we get a huge amount of "correlation != causation" posts and tags. When it's a study that slashdotters agree with or like (visiting slashdot during work improves your performance; don't feel guilty!), we're a little bit more lax on the fact that it's just as guilty of faulty logic, typical statistics, etc...

I'm sure I'm pointing out the obvious, but seems not many others have yet, so:)

Seems that when a study slashdotters don't agree with (video games "boost" teen violence), we get a huge amount of "correlation != causation" posts and tags. When it's a study that slashdotters agree with or like (visiting slashdot during work improves your performance; don't feel guilty!), we're a little bit more lax on the fact that it's just as guilty of faulty logic, typical statistics, etc...

Damnit I don't care how bogus the statistics are! If it justifies what I do at work all day anyway, I'm gonna take it as gospel proof until my boss comes back with a refutation in Science.

Without looking at the study, I'd say there's a mix of reasons for this.

One, if you actually need to concentrate on your work, a distraction every once in a while can be (and usually is) helpful, if your brain simply isn't working the way you want it to.

Two, people who take the 'internet breaks' likely spend a lot of their day simply thinking, anyway. People who don't surf the web, probably can't: their work is very linear, boring, work, but not something that they could not conceivably accomplish at a fixe

I think this should be filed under the general maxim that happier workers are, generally, more productive workers.

Plus, so many jobs now expect you to be working to some extent while you're at home (checking email, etc). If an employer wants an employee to work while at home, then it's reasonable for the employee to do some personal web surfing at work.

Perhaps people who browse the web at work are _more comfortable with_ and _more knowledgeable about_ computers in general, than people who don't browse the internet at work. I've seen many users who are clueless about computers wasting time by using their computers badly, unproductively, or not at all.

If you can't use a spreadsheet, chances are you don't 'get' the internet. I'm wondering if perhaps the study is drawing the wrong conclusion. Perhaps internet browsing isn't the 'cure', but a healthy symptom indicating a better affinity to computers.

I'm a software engineer and I've used a spreadsheet maybe 5 times in my life. I hate to sound like Bender here, but most everything in life is a degenerative form of programming, especially spreadsheets.

It may be that bright-minded, sharp, intelligent, high mental-energy, people are already prone to being more productive, and that searching for ideas and information is just part of their wiring. Of course the information and stimulation help feed the process. OK, back to work...

'People who do surf the internet for fun at work -- within a reasonable limit of less than 20 per cent of their total time in the office -- are more productive by about nine per cent than those who don't,' said Coker.

I had a boss that would have balked at the 20% figure. He believed (and told us as much) that you were wasting company time and money if you were anything less than 100% engaged in your work. He was, however, always interested in boosting productivity any way possible, so when someone brought up Google's "personal project time" policy (Google was the rockstar of the Internet then, even moreso than now), he wanted to try it. Once we started seriously discussing it, though, the boss killed the idea by proclaiming that the personal project time would be in addition to, not replacing your normal 8-hour day. That means you either had to come in early, stay late, or come in on a weekend. And it wouldn't count as overtime either. That pretty much killed all interest.

All the surfing breaks, coffee breaks, ciggy breaks, comfort breaks and lunch don't leave much time to actually achieve anything. Though it's good to know that if I did have time, I'd be so much more effective.

From Michael Scott, "Jim Halpert. Pros. Smart, cool, good looking. Remind you of anyone you know? Cons. Not a hard worker. I can spend all day on a project and he can finish the same project in a half an hour. So that should tell you something."

Anecdotally, I am more inclined to believe that people who are more productive can slack off more. At my previous job, I would often do more work than my colleague and still found plenty of time to slack off, because I knew how to do the work quickly and correctly.

No, you're misinterpreting what is being said. He said, "within a reasonable limit of less than 20 per cent of their total time in the office are more productive by about nine per cent than those who don't."

Note that he did not say, "more productive by about nine per cent per hour." In other words, if Person A works 10 hours without breaks and makes 100 widgets, then Person B who works 8 hours and takes 2 hours worth of breaks will have produced 109 widgets.

is if you get your work done. This is influenced by a lot of factors. But in the end you Boss should not need to analyse your Web usage to determine if you do a good job. If he needs, he is not the right man for the job.

No, you misunderstand what they're saying. They're talking about the amount of work which is accomplished, not how long you're working. So, they're saying those who never surf do x amount of work. However, those who surf for 20% of their day (or less) do 1.09*x work. Even though they spend less time working, they get more done, thus they're more productive

There are too many variables to apply this to a large company via IT and web filtering. If I see that my sales person was doing fantasy football for 8 hours non stop each day, then I report that to his manager.

If the sales guy is making his sales, then it's "who cares." If he's not, then appropriate actions can be taken.

What about my shop staff or house keeping? They can't possibly be repairing vehicles or cleaning if they are on Fantasy Football 8 hours a day.

Knowledge work is entirely different from manufacturing type work. The relationship between actual production and hours-spent is very weak. We aren't screwing on hubcaps; we have to coax the glob of meat between our ears to cooperate.

Where I work, there are managers who (incompetently) think knowledge workers should be managed like factory workers. These chumps have extremely high turnover, and their employees seem defensive and stressed most of the time. One such manager constantly monitors his employee's internet usage, and fires all of those who visit non-work-related web sites.

If you have an incompetent manager who thinks he's running a factory, browse anyway. You really should be happy if you get fired for moderate web use, because you will be miserable trying to build a career under such a buffoon, anyway.

The story about General Groves and the Los Alamos scientists during the Manhattan Project comes right to mind here. He entered a room where they were all standing and sitting about working out equations on a blackboard and went ballistic wanting to know whey weren't "working".

I worked for a company like this. Or actually I still work for them. Their problem was that they *were* running a factory. They just made the mistake of treating their office workers the same way as their factory workers.

So when I got sick of working in that environment, and told them where they could shove their industrial-economy employee regulatory scheme, they fired me. I refused their severance offer, along with any help in training a replacement. Now they pay me more money to do the same work fro

They just said that 20% of your paid time, doing something other than what they are paying you to do, is reasonable? Would a company paying you 20% less all of the sudden be reasonable? If you are getting paid, STFU and get the work done. If there's no work to do, clock out and go home.

Well according to this study, the people who offend you so much get more done than the people who don't.

Yeah, but most people are. And what I've seen at all the 7+ companies i've work for is pretty much right out of Office Space: people only working just hard enough to not get fired.

It seems the corporate system is designed this way though. At most companies I've been paid a straight salary with no overtime and either no bonus or a possible 5% bonus based on how well I've been able to project a productive air to my manager.

So where's the incentive to work harder? When we kick ass and do well as a company, I rarely see an extra cent. When we do poorly as a company I still get paid exactly the same. True I have the possibility of getting laid off but everyone faces the same possibility and generally the axe doesn't fall on me because I do a perfectly OK job. I'd love to be encouraged to work harder with profit sharing or the like but few companies do this.

It seems there are much better models to encourage productivity and I have no idea why most companies don't adopt them.

That brings up an interesting possibility; ignoring the obvious correlation != causation issue here, consider this possible reason why surfing the web at work might make people slightly more productive overall: whether you work for 40 of your 40 hours or 32 of your 40 hours, you'll only do enough to not get fired. Perhaps people who browse the web 20% of the time have more cause for concern about their productivity not being "just enough", so they overcompensate and actually work harder?

When you're not paid overtime, or when you hate your job, I think working the bare minimum is much more attractive. There was one job where I could have made a significant return on overtime, but I didn't like the line of work, so nothing could make want to stay there past my end time.

Fortunately, as a student, I still have options before I have to start looking for a job to actually survive on it.

Probably because the guy who makes those decisions is also doing the bare minimum to get by.

BTW- I'm in the same boat. I work just hard enough to be slightly better than half of my peers (call it a security blanket against being laid off). This affords me the luxury of watching Orb/Hulu/ProjectFreeTV for the entirety of my workday, frequent coffee and cig breaks and minimal responsibilities, in addition to ample time to poke around and play with pretty much whatever to see how it works. Conversely, my cl

Ah, so you're company pays you to sit at your desk for 40 hours a week? Or does your company pay you to get a weeks worth of work done in a week?

If you're being logical about it, working for 32 hours and getting 44 hours of work done is still better than working 40 hours and getting 40 hours of work done; which is what the article is saying. One of the biggest problems I have with the world in general is people doing what seems right instead of applying logic to the situation.

Companies don't pay for 40 hours of your work, they pay for 40 hours of your presence. Your boss can easily measure how long you've been at work, but not how productive you've been, so that's the metric used.

They just said that 20% of your paid time, doing something other than what they are paying you to do, is reasonable? Would a company paying you 20% less all of the sudden be reasonable? If you are getting paid, STFU and get the work done. If there's no work to do, clock out and go home.

No, they said that people who spend 20% of their work time browsing the internet do 9% more work overall than people who don't browse the internet during work time.